All in a days work

Welcome to our life:)
Where the days are long and the years are short.
Where we run all day long after rambunctious toddlers and disciple high energy children.
Where we plan meals that take 30 minutes to make and 5 minutes to devour.
Where we change diapers, feed pets, weed gardens and read books like they are all going out of style.
Where we laugh and cry over life and the crazy turns it takes.
Where we learn and discover everything we can about the world we are in and Who made it.
Where we go to bed exhausted but we know that exhausted is a good thing, for we've worked hard.
And where we gaze in wonder at the beautiful little faces in this house and pray for strong growth in bodies and souls.
This is our life.  It's intense and full. Good and blessed.
  

 Marla at 2 months.  Such a sweetheart. 

The boys all want to hold her daily. She is cherished.

The best load of laundry :)

Dad and his girls!

I have to make time to do some sewing.  

Of course. 

Because who can resist matching leggings?

Andy bought a BIG van!  He says its for me, but he can't stop grinning when he drives it or sees me driving it.  Now we can throw in kids, strollers, water bottles, a potty and still all go to Costco for the largest pack of toilet paper. 

This van is fun, it's a  Nissan NV3500 so has some power (about the only things making me feel cool while driving it around haha). So far it drives like a Cadillac, and the best part: we can separate the kids on long trips ;) 

We finished up school last week in May. I got feverish yet to get some fun projects in, so we did a Charlotte Mason Picture study on Rembrandt van Rijn in the last weeks as well as a unit on astronomy.   All of it was enjoyed by Mom and kids.

Cousins Asher and Charlotte came for a visit during Easter and of course we had to make matching leggings.  ;) Such little sweeties these babes are. 

 

Beppe comes over

I am so far behind.
It's incredible really. ;)
BUT I really do want to keep putting and organizing my photos so here goes! 

We've had such a flood of visitors the past several months its been nothing but parties!
Middle of March led to the arrival of Uncle Auke, Aunt Carina and Beppe for a week, and we were really looking forward to it.
So, just for the record, we had a really fun time, and we are so thankful they could come, we love you all, buuuut not much went according to plan.  It was all quite funny and remarkable how that much could go wrong in such a short time but we made the most of it and were gracious and everything turned out well even though not as we had hoped.   Love good spirits:) 
First of all their flight was cancelled and they had to catch another flight later in the day from Toronto.   I had been sent a message thru 'What's Ap' telling me about the change of plans but my phone isn't up to snuff and so I never got the message. Here we were expecting guests for supper and no one showed up, we tried getting a hold of them but to no avail so we figured we must have had the wrong dates (or the plane went down??!).  Hours later the company finally arrived. Yay!
The next day was Sunday and we had a dump of snow, and of course we didn't clear the driveway or anything as we were not expecting such a big dump, and as we were leaving to church we got stuck in our own driveway.  Talk about cranky husband;)  Heavy, dense and cold, it wasn't a pleasant surprise!
From Monday till Wednesday we had booked a condo in Fernie BC to go on a ski trip. And we did go and have fun, but again not much went according to plan as it rained most of the time. We spent the day Monday at Castle Mountain and from there went on to Fernie but never once did the rain clouds lift off the mountain (insert sad face). Thankfully we had a really nice place to stay at and we did find other things to do - good thing we all took our bathing suits along! To make the adventure complete, Auke hit a deer on the highway which did some good damage to the rental car. Thankfully it was still drive-able although it did waste a considerable amount of time trying to get the police report done since it happened at a very inopportune location (on the border of Alberta while we were staying in BC). 
I don't have that many pictures as I feel like I have been so busy taking care of all the little and sometimes big people there's not alot of imagination left for taking pictures, but here is what I have.  Thanks for coming Beppe, Auke and Carina, it's always special for us to show people our part of the planet.  We are thankful you took the time out of your busy lives to invest in us. Thanks also for introducing us to the Mrs Vickies Kettle chips - which I have since discovered Costco sells in gigantic bags :D